


you'll find me waiting here for you.

by commonemergency



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 00:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18767167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: Walking down the streets of London is like walking down a ghost town, missing people posters filled the streets along with trash and cars. They’ve had many discussions of relocating somewhere safer, somewhere with more possibilities of food and other resources, but it’s hard letting go of the place that shaped you.or Dan and Phil (+ two lesbians) vs. a post apocalyptic world.





	you'll find me waiting here for you.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittledizzy (dizzy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Mandy! I hope today is as special as you are. Thanks for everything that you do for this community. <3333

**i.**

_Where were you when it happened?_

Dan pulls down his long sleeve, wishing that it were longer so that way it can completely swallow him up whole. It’s black, and thick, like something you’d wear in mourning. Phil reaches out with his equally long black long sleeve, fingers lacing together because far too much shit has happened to care if people in this dingy flat are recording them. 

Dan has just now realised how the lights keep flickering, he suspected that the power would have ran out on this side of town by now. Day by day London is becoming more and more darker even if it’s been a couple of months. It was a big city with big money, a lot of rich people who were still left were willing to do anything to keep the power running just a little bit longer. It had started a complete inner city war on how they were spending their money, by the time people started marching towards their doors they had already fled either out of the city or out of the country—both were hard to do now given the closed borders. 

He shakes. He can’t help it. 

The light flickers again, and if you listened closely you could hear the wind because London has never been more quiet. 

“Home.” Dan eventually says, but his voice is quiet. “I was at home.” 

“And you?” The kid looks barely twenty-three, his notes are written down on a yellow notepad that’s been watered damaged, and his hands are shaking too. That seems to be the overwhelming effect of the entire situation. 

“Isle of Man,” Phil gulps, he’s not looking at the kid, he’s looking at Dan. “I went to visit my parents before—” _before it happened_ , before everything changed. 

“I’m sure it must have been hard to get back home after that.” He sounds sympathetic, Dan watches as the kid looks down at a necklace that’s got a ring on it. 

“It was terrifying.” Phil’s thumb makes small circles into Dan’s skin. 

“Can we take a break?” Dan’s voice is like a crack of thunder, it makes everyone jump. 

“Of course.” The journalist, (Dan thinks that’s what he is, he used to work for the BBC when it was still…. Well, the BBC) nods for the very dismal amount of crew to disperse. 

Dan gets up from the seat and Phil is still gripping onto his hand. They both take deep breaths looking at each other, and then, Dan sees the wall. It’s a wall of all the missing people within this group of people, he thinks. All the journalist, news reporters, radio DJ’s, to missing spouses, partners and children. 

Dan reaches up to touch the faces, there’s a little blurb underneath the picture that says what they were wearing last and what number to call if found. Reading the numbers makes his heart hurt knowing that phone lines have been down for a while now. It was one of the last things to go. 

“Why are we doing this.” Phil has slotted himself next to Dan, resting his head against his shoulder. They’ve been more touchy lately, afraid that if they separate for even a second the other will disappear, too. 

Dan lets out a slow breath. 

“Because we want people to know we’re alive.” 

That was the plan, at least, no one knows where their loved one’s went. There were many nights of laying in the dark and silence Phil had said, _“Maybe they all just agreed to leave together.”_

Dan wanted to laugh because of how far they both were reaching to try and understand what happened. It would be certainly easier to believe that millions of people just left because they wanted to and not because of whatever. It was fucking infuriating not knowing anything. 

The Queen was gone. Half of the royal family was gone. There were conspiracies that started shortly after they found out that Queen disappeared. There always would be during any time of tragedy but even Dan couldn’t laugh at it. The Queen wasn’t invincible by any means, but if whatever it was could take the Queen, well, he didn’t want to finish the thought. 

“What’s the point of recording it if the internet doesn’t work? What’s the point of writing it down if nothing can be sent out? What’s the p—”

“ _Phil_ ,” Dan begged, “ _Please_. There are ways…. There has to be.” 

Maybe Dan knew that somehow this would be a lost cause, but if anything were to happen to any of them, and if by chance they all died or were forced to move on, there would be this small bit of evidence that they tried to search for them, that they tried to communicate with them if they ever came back.

“I’m sorry.” Phil whispers, wrapping himself around Dan. 

Dan wipes his face with the end of his sleeve. 

“Let’s try again.” Dan sighs. 

Their interviewer is named David, he recognised from him when he was just an intern at the BBC, it was a shock to see them, a lot of the people that Dan and Phil used to work with disappeared and he cried when he saw them at one of their district meetings. Dan and Phil didn’t understand why they still went to the meetings, it was just a bunch of people sitting in one place being told the same thing over and over again. It was just a reminder of what they’ve lost staring out into the sea of people. 

David had wanted to do something for the community, he along with his tiny crew were trying to get these small little interviews out when the internet was still available that way maybe, if their loved one’s were out there somewhere they’d know that there were people still here waiting for them to come back. When the internet stopped they still kept going, Dan thinks it’s probably a good thing, it gives him something to keep doing, even if the goal may be unattainable. 

Dan stares at the ring around his neck, he wonders that maybe by doing this he’ll bring his partner back. Dan wanted to believe that with him. 

By the time they finish the interview it’s late, the sky is a dark blue and Dan and Phil didn’t bring their torches. London got so dark at night, it was unnerving. After a few months they still weren’t used to it, they didn’t want to be. 

“Here,” David grabs something from a big box, from what Dan can see it’s supplies. 

“Sorry for keeping you here for so long.” His voice shakes, and his eyes flicker towards the wall of missing people. 

“We want to help anyway we can.” Dan says with a small smile, reaching out to touch David’s arm. 

Everyone had a breaking point, the one thing that’s keeping you from completely losing it, apparently that simple act of human contact was David’s breaking point. He collapsed in Dan’s arms and let out these small, sobs that racked his entire body. Dan wrapped his arms around him, eventually, Phil did too. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, pulling away and wiping his face. “That was unprofessional. You’re just the first people in a while to agree to do this and I know that it’s a lost cause—”

Phil shakes his head, “You don’t know that it’s a lost cause. You’re doing what you can.” 

Dan looks at Phil, and for some reason, he knows that he’s not just saying that to David, he’s saying it to Dan, too. 

*

They take extreme precautions getting back home, only using the torches when needed, trying to make themselves not seen in case a fight breaks out. The first few weeks of The Disappeared (that’s what everyone is calling it, there’s no real name for it because no one can understand it), London was chaos—whoever was left of the government tried to enforce some kind of order. It didn’t work, but after a while everyone started to get used to the fact that maybe this was the new normal. Before the borders closed down a lot of people left, but most stayed. 

They stayed for the same reason Dan and Phil stayed. 

When they get back to the flat they knock five times and not a knock more. 

Georgia answers the door, pulling them into their flat. 

They lock everything up and barricade the door. There’s candles everywhere, tiny little embers surrounding their flat. 

“We have beans for dinner but we decided to make it fancy with tortillas. It’s a very sad burrito, basically.” 

“Hey, you guys had me worried.” Hannah gets up from the couch and gives both of them a long hug. 

“They still had some power.” Dan said amazed. 

Not that people listened, but they were told to stay in their districts, it was easier to keep track of people that way, but there wasn’t heavy security because all of those people were guarding borders more than their people. 

“Who knows for how long that’ll last though.” Hannah sighs. 

“How did it go?” Georgia grabs plates from the cupboards and sets them on the counter placing the tortillas on each plate. They’ve gotten so acquainted with Dan and Phil’s kitchen, they probably knew it better than they did. 

Dan takes a deep breath, shaking his head. 

“It was rough.” 

Phil stands next to Dan, holding on to his hand. 

Georgia and Hannah look at each other for a moment. It was an odd sight to see, but it reminded Dan of his connection with Phil. He wondered if what he was seeing was what Dan and Phil looked like from the outside. He smiled briefly, his thumb smoothing over Phil’s hand. 

“I think we have salsa.” Dan mutters, he pulls Phil along with him bending down to look in the deep dark corners of their pantry. Phil helps grabbing his torch to shine light. They still had packets of crisps left, they had rice that they needed to figure out how to eat, and cans of beans from when food rations were given out but their supplies were running low and they knew that they weren’t the only people to have this problem, but in comparison to many others, they were doing okay. 

When Georgia and Hannah had showed up to their door it was out of pure terror that someone would come and ransack their flat. They had banged on the door saying that it was their neighbours, they had only met once taking the trash out numerous times throughout their time living in the flats, but their conversations weren’t meaningful. 

There’s strength in numbers, so they became allies, combining food resources and whatever else they got. The first couple of weeks they had all camped out in one area afraid to sleep apart in case of invasion. 

No one really slept, the only way that any of them were able to get some rests those first couple of weeks was to take shifts of staying awake, checking every window, peeking out every curtain and going through every room. Perhaps it was paranoia, but they were doing what they could to survive and thus far, it was working out okay. 

“Found it!” Dan cheered quietly, grabbing that beautiful container of salsa out from the very depths of their pantry. He placed it next to the can of beans and Hannah shook her head laughing. 

“Thank fuck.” Georgia said with a relieved sigh. “If there is something I miss, it’s spice- just spice of any kind really.” 

They plate their dishes, dabbing a little bit of salsa on their beans and roll it like a burrito. They sit in a circle, with a couple of candles in the middle. Phil made a joke that it looked like a seance which earned him a push to the shoulder from Dan but a laugh from the girls. This was how most of their nights were like. 

Dan used to joke all the time about how he never left his house, now he was too afraid too, now he was forced to stay in here because the world outside was too scary, it was dangerous and unknown. He thinks about this now as they quietly chew on their bean burrito. He gets angry sometimes. The anger has been festering for a while, he didn’t understand and he was someone that needed to understand. 

He digs his thumb into the middle of his palm and he takes a small breath before biting into his food. When he looks up Phil is looking at him in wonder, trying so hard to read Dan’s mind. They both held so much grief for the things that they lost. Phil reaches out to hold his hand. There was never a moment now when they weren’t touching each other in some way. 

Hannah and Georgia are talking amongst themselves and Dan can pretend that they’re camping. It’s just in their living room and there’s a chance that any one of them could disappear. 

“We should play a board game.” Phil says, tearing his eyes away from Dan to look at Hannah and Georgia. “We could use some fun.” He says now with a shrug. 

Dan gets up and grabs their plates and scrapes off the scraps and uses a towel to wipe off the rest. He puts them back in the cupboard like he normally would, trying so hard to keep a semblance of normalcy even though nothing is normal anymore. 

“What board game?” Dan asks, his voice is hoarse, and he tries to clear his throat. He sits down next to Hannah, their knees bumping into each other. 

There’s a loud noise outside and it makes them all jump, it’s quiet for a moment before there’s yelling and laughter. Dan’s anxiety flared, and he got up and grabbed a knife from the kitchen. He so badly wanted to look out a window but he couldn’t. 

“I think they passed.” Georgia whispered, reaching out to grab Dan’s hand, trying to pull him back Dan. 

“It sounded far away.” Phil agreed, coming up to Dan and resting a hand on his arm. 

Dan didn’t adjust as well as everyone else had. He didn’t know if he ever would. 

“It just. Sucks.” Dan says with a sigh. He sits down, the knife still in his hands. He places it behind him, ready to grab at a moments notice. 

“It sucks.” Hannah reaches out to squeeze his hand. 

“Let’s play First Dates.” Phil grabs the box now and sets it down for Dan to set up while he gets some candles to give them more lighting. 

Phil sits down next to Dan, and they look at each other. 

_We made a board game once._

*

Dan was on the phone with his brother when it happened. They were talking about when it would be a good time to go home for a visit, wanting to schedule it together so it would be a nice surprise for nana and their mum. 

They had been on the phone for a while, Dan looking at train tickets, Adrian was babbling on about something that Dan didn’t quite understand until Adrian went quiet. 

“Adrian?” Dan had said it with such an annoyed tone, he remembers rolling his eyes. 

“Come on man.” Dan said, the annoyance just dripping off his tongue. “Fine, whatever.” 

Dan hung up the phone and texted him the dates that he thought fit best with both of their schedules. 

It didn’t take long for mass hysteria. It was the screams that he heard first, and then it was followed by a car crash, but not just one, it was several. 

Dan had grabbed his phone and ran to the balcony, many of the surrounding neighbours in their flats were standing outside and so many of them were crying, screaming out names of their loved ones. 

Dan had called Phil, he didn’t answer. 

So he tried to call his mum, she never picked up. 

And when he tried to call Adrian again, he knew. 

When Phil did call him back he was shaking so hard, and he was hiding in their bathroom with the doors barricaded. 

“They just disappeared, Phil.” Dan whispered. 

“They’re all gone.” 

*

The first time they run into a fan, it’s during the long wait for food. She comes walking up to them a little bit stunned. It was normal for their fans to be a little star struck but this was different. She doesn’t say anything at first, she just closes her eyes for a second before she can talk. 

“I thought you disappeared.” She says, her voice breaks a little, she starts shaking her head. “I’m sorry. This is weird, I’m making it weird. It’s just, you’re one of the only people that I know who didn’t disappear.”

She starts to cry, and it crosses all personal boundaries that they usually try to set outside of meet and greets, but it was the end of the world and Dan really wanted a fucking hug. He reaches out to hold her and she reciprocates, and then she’s crying, and then Dan is crying. He tries to make a joke, but it’s hard to joke when the world is already so bleak. 

“I’ll let you go now.” She says, a small laugh, and she’s wiping her face with her sleeve. Dan looks behind her and sees a little boy holding a bag like so many of them are. 

“It’s my brother.” She says sheepishly. 

Phil waves to her brother and he waves back and they see a smile, and that makes Phil start to tear up a little bit. So, they hug again, it’s very quick, and they tell her good luck. 

Dan tried so hard not to think of _them._

Them being all of their internet kids, because if he thought about them, it would cause him to spiral. How many of them disappeared? How were they all surviving during this? Were they getting enough food to eat? Were their parents still here? Did their partners make it? Dan is digging his fingernails into his palm and Phil grabs his hand. 

“I know.” Phil says, he brings his hand up to his lips and they move up in line a little. 

*

Georgia asks about their life before this, having seen the interaction in person. They’re laying out all of their food they got, Dan is organising them as best as he can, they still have some light and he’s trying to work as fast as he can, placing all the canned meats on one end of the counter and getting the small amount of vegetables they do have in a bundle to wash later. They have one gallon of water now that they’ve been saving up. 

“We made youtube videos.” Phil taps against a half empty glass of ribena. It’s strong for his taste, but it’s a treat now, so he takes his time with it. 

“So your whole life was on the internet.” Hannah sits down next to Georgia, she’s got an arm wrapped around her, they’re both leaning into each other. 

“Yeah.” Phil’s smile is small and forced. 

“I miss the internet.” Dan says with a sigh.  
It’s dangerous—to start listing all the things that they miss. It’s dangerous because the list will never end. It’s been so long since they’ve seen their friends without any kind of communication they don’t know which ones survived. 

“Me too.” Phil whispers. 

*

It turns out, the end of the world, starts to become monotonous. They wake up, they check every room, ever locked door, they sleep, and play board games and talk about everything but the problem that surrounds them. 

Life goes on. 

Dan is sitting in their room for the first time in a month. It was hard just being in any room alone, but he was having a hard day existing in a world that was half empty. He was peeking out at the window, watching for people, hoping that maybe with a blink of an eye they’d come back just as quickly as they left. 

But there was no one. 

It was so quiet. It was so quiet and his head was so loud. He used to beg for the silence but now he wanted everything but that. 

He takes one last look out the window before he crawls into their bed that feels so foreign now. He burrows himself under the covers and he thinks of how much he misses the sound of the ambulances. He misses the sound of drunken people from a night out. He misses his neighbours dog barking, he misses the sound of children laughing. He misses his phone going off, he misses being able to tweet about his opinions on everything pop culture. He misses seeing his friends lives online. He misses the normality of everything—Dan had never been good with change, and he always had people to help him with change, but now—they were gone, and there was no guarantee if they’d ever come back. 

They had all thought about it one night, going out to try and find the ones that they lost, but they wouldn’t know where to go, and there was a chance that they might not make it back. But food supplies were getting low and more and more people were getting antsy. Dan can’t remember the last time he had gotten a full nights sleep because he’d wake up in terror, too afraid that one of them would be gone when he woke up. 

Dan closes his eyes now, he thinks of Wokingham and all of the green hills that he used to roll down with his brother. He thinks of how his mother would be horrified when they got home but she would have a small smile on her lips remembering what it was like to be that age. Their nana would start up the bath for them and would go back downstairs to make hot chocolate for the both of them, and Dan would think of how good that day was and how he’d like to have more days like it. 

Dan falls asleep to the memory. 

*

Dan wakes up to a body next to him in the bed. He knows that it’s Phil, but it doesn’t hit him that they’re both in this bed together for the first time in ages. Phil has his arms wrapped around him and Dan could weep from how deprived of this he was. He turns around and it makes Phil stir in his sleep. 

“Hi,” Dan whispers, trying to get as close as possible. His fingers reach up to touch Phil’s face. It’s so dark, he can’t see, but he knows. Years and years worth of staring at Phil’s face, he knows. 

Dan’s fingers smooth over his chin, his lips, and then his cheek. It had been so long since they’ve been alone like this without worrying that something bad was going to happen. That thought was still in the corner of his mind but he knew that if something were to happen it already would have. 

So, he presses his mouth to Phil’s collarbone. They’re starting to smell less and less like them, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. They’ve adapted thus far, Dan can adapt to the way that they’re slowly changing, but at least it’s together. 

Phil’s hands are wrapped tightly around Dan, his hand travels up his shirt and Phil’s hands are so cold but it feels so good. 

“Love you.” Dan says into his neck, his tongue and teeth sucking a small mark. It’ll fade away by tomorrow but it doesn’t really matter anymore. 

They fall asleep like that again, clinging on to each other like they’re the only people in the world. 

*

It’s a crazy plan, but it’s necessary for survival. Dan vetoed it immediately when Georgia brought it up. Dan had actually stomped out of the room and barricaded himself in their room. They gave him an hour before Phil sat outside the door to try and explain why it was a good idea. 

The plan was this: Georgia and Phil would go scavenge for food. They’d go for three days and come back after those three days. Dan didn’t want Phil to go, he thought that it was a dumb idea, even though he knew that they couldn’t survive off the rations they had alone. There would be no food left. 

“I’ll come back.” 

Dan wanted to be bitter, he wanted to reply back, will you? He wanted to hurt Phil’s feelings, but that feeling faded, and he knew that he was trying to do his part, whatever he meant by that, he just hated the fact that they had to be separated like this, but it was the only option they had. 

So Dan grabbed their empty backpacks and took them out to the living room and they dumped everything out. 

“I have pepper spray still.” Georgia held it up with a small smile. 

“What are you going to do for protection, Phil?” Dan sighs. 

“I don’t know yet.” 

“Great,” Dan whispered, “This is going to go great.” 

He rubbed the back of his neck, grabbing Phil’s windbreaker from the closet and handing it to him. It was starting to warm up aside from the occasional rain storms, but they needed to travel light 

“Dan.” Phil reached out to grab Dan’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be okay.” 

Phil grabbed Dan’s face and pressed his lips against Dan’s. It took Dan a second, he wanted to be stubborn, but he sighed, giving in to the kiss, letting himself get lost in it before pulling away. 

“Come back.” Dan said as he wrapped his arms around Phil. 

He gave Georgia a hug and looked away when Hannah was telling her goodbye. 

“They’ll be okay.” Hannah sighed when they closed the door. 

_They had to be._

*

Dan learns a lot about Hannah. 

Before The Disappeared happened, Hannah was a nurse and Georgia was too. They met a few years ago when they were still in school, they used to study together and then that studying would lead to getting coffee together, which lead to getting dinner together until Hannah made the first move. They used to be always busy, their shifts never were at the same time but that was okay because they made it work. On their free weekends they’d go to the farmers or Camden market. 

They were looking to adopt a dog soon but they needed to figure out a better schedule since they were always working. They often had the same fights that Dan and Phil had about taking the trash out. Dan had to laugh at how similar Georgia and Phil are. Both incredibly lazy when they wanted to be, often making their partner do all the clean up because they’ve ‘had a hard day’. 

Dan grabs the wine that they kept for special occasions, he opens it up because it’s just the two of them, and he missed Bryony. So, after a second glass of wine he started to tell Hannah about her and how they met. 

It was a weird conversation, a very vulnerable one, when she asked about Phil. 

“I’m so used to our history just being out there online,” Dan takes a sip of the wine. 

Hannah eyes him for a moment, she gives him a small smile. 

“That must be hard.” She eventually says. 

Dan shrugs. “It was, in the beginning.” 

Hannah takes a deep breath, finishing her glass of wine and pouring just a little bit more in her cup. 

“Fuck it,” Dan says, they were trying to save some of the wine for later, but what was the point? “Let’s just finish it, yeah?” 

Hannah nodded enthusiastically. 

They laughed so hard at dumb train of thoughts they had, but that was okay because it was some of the most fun that Dan had in a long time. They laid on the ground in the living room surrounded by their candles, talking about what they missed most. 

Dan said pizza and regular amount of sex. 

Hannah had to agree.

They didn’t name people. They just named things. 

“What do you think they’re doing?” Hannah asks after a couple of minutes of silence. 

“I don’t know. Hopefully they’ve found some shelter for the night.” 

“It must be nice to look at the moon. I bet they can actually see the stars now.” Hannah mused. 

The thought made Dan want to cry. 

When you lived in a city you forgot things like that. 

“Let’s go.” Dan said, feeling brave. 

“What?” Hannah had tilted her head up to look at Dan. 

“Come on, on our balcony.” Dan’s head spun a little getting up as quickly as he did. 

“But what if—” Hannah was about to list all the reasons of why it could be dangerous before closing her mouth. “Fuck it.” 

Dan had quietly opened their balcony door and was greeted by a cold breeze, it felt so good. 

Hannah had linked their arms together. 

They didn’t hear anything. There was no sound. 

Dan had breathed in the fresh air and looked up at the moon and the stars that they could see. He wondered if Phil was doing the same thing too. He bit his lip now, looking at where the moon illuminated on the deck. He started to walk towards the wall where their plants were placed. He bent down and reached out to touch one of the leaves. It fell apart in between his fingers and Dan took it as a loss. 

“Sorry.” He whispered to the plants. 

Phil was so proud of their plants and how well they were doing. 

Maybe it was the alcohol that was making his emotions intensify but he felt a tear run down his cheek. He quickly wiped it away with the corner of his sleeve. He shook his head, getting up and walking back to Hannah. 

“I miss home and I am home.” Dan sighs.

“Me too.” 

*

The second day, they tidy up the flat as much as they can, keeping a tally of all the candles that are completely done. They fold all the blankets that have been tossed about and straighten up the living room. They clean everything as much as they can and they’re left with nothing to do. 

Dan goes to his room and grabs one of his notebooks and takes it to the living room. He sits on the floor by one of the windows so he can get a little bit of the natural light from the cracks of the blinds. He opens the notebook up and skips through pointless notes that he’s written. 

It’s video ideas that he wrote down in passing. It’s random thought tangents that he wanted written down on paper instead of on his computer. He looks at all the scribbles that he made, the places where his pen smeared, and all the little cartoons he tried to create. 

He finds a clean page and he begins to write. 

Dan doesn’t know who he’s really writing to, he’s just writing so he doesn’t forget. 

_Dear you,_

_I don’t know what it’s like where you came from, I hope this world suits you better than your last if you had to travel a long way to get here. I’m sorry that we left the world in such a mess. I want to say that it hasn’t always been like this but we’ve never really been too kind to our world. It’s true that we didn’t deserve it. Maybe you’ll treat it better than we did._

_We spent much of our lives figuring out the existence of our world and beyond that we never really prepared for what happened if people were just to leave it._

_They’re called The Disappeared. There’s no real official name for it, it’s just what our officials are calling it because we can’t think of anything better. We don’t want to use the word dead. I think you can understand why that word would cause such chaos, even though everything is sort of falling apart day by day. We’re trying our best with what we got though, maybe naively hoping that someday those that disappeared will come back._

_I don’t really know why I’m writing this letter, who knows if you’ll even read it, but I just need to let these thoughts out, to preserve something even if it’s just to the dust._

_Hopefully there will be enough stuff left behind to fill in the gaps, I don’t know how much time will have passed before you get to us. I don’t know if the videos we make will still work by then, but hopefully they will._

_My name is Daniel Howell, I’m 27, raised in Wokingham, currently reside in London. I have a partner named Philip Lester, he’s 32, raised in Rawtenstall, also currently resides in London._

_We don’t know if we were the last of our family._  
_We don’t really know anything._

_We lost contact with a lot of people very quickly, there was so much chaos and grief we holed ourselves up in our home and only recently got brave enough to head outside of London to look for food._

_(Phil did, I’m staying behind in case people come back.)_

_I don’t know what else to tell you, so I’m going to tell you about some things that I miss._

_I don’t know what it was like where you lived, but there’s this feeling you get when it’s morning and the sun is shining through the window that makes you feel like life isn’t all that bad, and when you look at your phone you’ll have a text message from a friend and it’s a link to something that made them laugh and you’ll respond back with a string of random letters and maybe a curse word because it made you smile and feel warm that they thought of you. And then you’d get up and put more clothes on because it’s morning and it’s cold but not too cold and you’ll walk to the kitchen and something other than coffee will be made and it’s just the start of a really good day. You’ll sit with your lover on the couch and he’ll tweet something dumb that a lot of people will reply to because it’s your job and it’s just a really good day._

_I miss those days._

_I even miss the days that weren’t so great because at least then I knew that people I loved still existed._

_My partner and I went on tour once and got to travel the world and meet so many people and I know that it won’t ever happen again, but I’m really glad that I got to experience it when I did. It’s such a sad thought thinking that maybe sometime soon in the future the places we visited won’t exist anymore._

_It’s hard to think of the mortality of everything. It’s hard to think that my flat won’t be my flat anymore and it’ll just be another empty place that life formed around because there was no other place for it to go. I think that’s okay though. If it had to form around something I’m glad that it was here—because a lot of good memories were made here and maybe it’s not such a bad thing for new life to form in a place were good things happened once._

_I don’t know if I’ve accepted the fact that there will be an end, I try hard not to think about it, I want a couple more adventures first. I want a couple more years with Phil. I want a lot of things but if this has taught me anything, it’s to not take the things we love for granted. Because FUCK I miss pizza. I miss pizza so much and I can’t have it without electricity and I can’t have it without proper ingredients and we’ve been living off beans even though I know we’re lucky. I’m only human and I need to complain about stupid things like this._

_It’s the end of the world after as we know it and I’m not feeling fine._

_I was going to try and go for something more serious but this letter is pretty serious as it is and I just want you to know that I was someone who loved all kinds of food very much. I’d say that it’s one of the things that bonded my partner and I. Of course we have a lot of other shared interests but food—food is definitely one of them._

_Not that you asked, but we met on the internet._

_I won’t share every personal detail, but you had to know that’s where we met._

_We had a very good life here._

_We were very happy._

_I hope you are too._

_— Dan._

Dan stops writing, his fingers hurt from writing so much. He puts the pen and notebook down and thinks about ripping the pages out but he leaves it. Maybe he’ll put it in one of his tin boxes and he’ll place it somewhere nice, somewhere someone can see it if they looked hard enough for it. 

He takes a small breath and looks up at Hannah, she has a plate with spam and beans, they were given a can of olives too and he sees that on the plate as well. She sits across from him and he gives her a small smile. 

“Thanks.” He uses his fork to cut the spam, taking small bites just to make it last a little longer. 

“What were you writing?” She nods to the notebook now. 

Dan kind of smiles, but it fades, taking another bite of the spam. 

“I don’t know who it’s really addressed to. Maybe the people or- well, things that’ll come after us.” Dan shrugs. “It’s dumb…. But if it were me, I’d want to know if there were something out there—that we weren’t completely alone.” 

Hannah thinks for a moment, and then she nods like she understands. 

These are the kind of conversations that they have now. 

“We should learn a new skill or something.” Hannah suggests. 

“Like what?” 

She shrugs. “I don’t know. A card trick. How to play chess.” 

“We don’t have internet how would we—” Dan starts to say before he lets it drop. 

Hannah is just smiling. 

“Dan, it’s the end of the world, are there really any rules? We can make it up as we go along. A skill is a skill even if it’s not completely correct.” 

Dan just snorts. 

She was right, it would pass the time until tomorrow. 

*

That night they play Speed and eat more spam for dinner. Hannah wishes they had rice to eat it with, and at some point they need to figure out how to get one of those little camping stoves because this wasn’t going to cut it anymore. It was hard to want to plan for the future and have any long term goals, but getting a camp stove was one thing on both of their list. 

They get comfortable on the couches, all the candles have been blown out and they try hard not to think about who they’re missing, and hoping that they make it back okay. Dan had a hard time falling asleep alone now even though Hannah was in the room. It didn’t help that the only noise was the wind outside. It made it sound ominous, like something was impending. 

Dan missed music, and any kind of white noise, really. 

Dan starts to hum old nursery rhymes his grandmother used to sing him and Adrian. 

Looking back on a lot of the rhymes they’re quite dark, but they bring back fond memories. 

“I’m tired of missing things.” Hannah says before falling asleep. 

Dan is too. 

*

They’re not back yet. 

Dan tries his best not to panic, but it’s getting dark out and he’s already packed a bag ready to go out and look for Phil. _Fuck food_ , he thinks, he could probably survive off beans for a little while longer, he didn’t need anything else. 

Hannah has been pacing back and forth between the kitchen and the end of their living room. The amount of times she’s ran her hands through her curly hair it’s gone frizzy now. She’s biting at the end of her nails, biting until there’s nothing left. 

Dan has just been standing, waiting for the right moment, waiting for another minute, another second until he thinks that it’s the perfect time to go. 

Hannah and Dan haven’t said anything to each other since the sun went down. 

“Georgia is a nurse, if any of them got hurt she’d be able to fix it.” Hannah starts talking really fast now. “I mean, she’d know what to do. She’s strong enough to carry Phil if he got hurt. Phil is tall enough and looks like he could pull her weight if needed- I mean…. There has to be other people out there who care right?” Hannah’s hands are shaking. 

Dan’s hands and entire body is shaking. 

What would he have left if Phil didn’t make it back? 

“I—I don’t know.” Dan says, his voice is quiet and it’s breaking like everything else inside of him. 

“I’m going to pack a bag too.” Hannah runs to their stuff that they kept at one end of the living room dumping everything that they brought from their flat and only putting back medical related things that they’d need. 

It was not good having two people who were ready to run in the same room together. 

Halfway into Hannah’s packing the door knocks five times and not a moment more. Dan drops everything and runs towards the door, tripping over things because their flat is so dark. He moves everything out of the way unlocking the door. 

Phil greets Dan with a small smile and Dan throws his arms around him. 

Hannah is shocked, too shocked to make a noise but Georgia is telling her that it’s okay. They’re okay. They’re _all_ okay. 

“Sorry.” Phil says into Dan’s neck. 

“What happened?” Dan doesn’t pull away, he holds him just a little bit longer. 

“We got lost.” 

The first person to laugh is Georgia followed by Phil. 

Hannah and Dan are staring at each other and at their partners trying to understand why it’s so funny. 

“Like, we got really fucking lost.” Georgia says through her tears. 

“And the thing is, we were just going in a big fucking circle. It’s like we completely forgot our own city. I know we sound hysterical but the amount of times we looped the same route, I was about ready to kill the stupid Mcdonalds sign that we kept passing if I had to see it again.” Phil was wiping away his tears and Dan had to close his eyes. 

“Okay, so, next time we don’t put dumb and dumber together.” Hannah breathed in and out three times. 

“You really shouldn’t. The past three days taught us that we are too much alike and clearly don’t know our rights from our lefts.” It just made the two of them laugh again. 

Hannah and Dan were too stunned to say anything. When Dan looked up at Hannah, they shook their heads before one of them cracked. 

And then all four of them were laughing so hard that their sides hurt. It’s just the whole situation was fucking ridiculous that they had to laugh at it. 

“We must have looked so dumb if anyone was watching us.” Georgia was crying, gripping her sides, she couldn’t breathe. 

“Did you get anything?” Dan asked after they had finally settled down. 

“Yes!” Phil looked excited now, grabbing their backpacks and dumping everything on the counter. 

Dan sees a lot more canned meat, protein powder, half a loaf of bread. 

“We got hungry.” 

Dan shakes his head. 

“We found peanut butter!” Georgia is excited by this, she’s practically hopping up and Dan and her excitement is infectious. It’s their little bit of sunshine in such a perpetually dark room. 

“I miss salad.” Dan sighs, he’s grabbing their backpacks and taking the rest of the things out of them, noticing that they brought back a lot more medical supplies, and Dan is grateful.

“Oh!” Phil’s eyes widen now as Dan grabs it from the bag, it’s one of the last things that was in there. “I got instant coffee!” 

Dan stares down at it, it looks like it’s halfway gone. Like it had belonged to someone. Dan’s heart tugs, and he bites down on his bottom lip. It’s the small reminders like this that get to him, this belonged to someone once. There was somebody out there in London who loved instant coffee as much as Phil did, and he sends out a silent thank you to them—wherever they are, because they just made his boyfriend really, really happy. 

Dan doesn’t realise how choked up he is over it. He feels his eyes start to water a little bit, so he sets it aside near the pile that Dan created for special occasions. He doesn’t tell them how they drank the one wine bottle they had left. He doesn’t think that they would fault them for it. 

“I’m glad you found your gross instant coffee, Phil.” Dan says with a small smile, tugging Phil by his shirt to bring him in for a chaste kiss. 

“Rude.” Phil says against his lips, reaching out to tug on Dan’s hair. 

“We also got some beauty products!” Georgia excitedly holds up deodorant and dry shampoo. 

Their feast that night is peanut butter sandwiches with a can of fruit that they found. They play more board games and talk about the obstacles that Georgia and Phil faced. There were groups of people that went out to scavenge for stuff, they were kind enough to let Phil and Georgia tag along for a while, it was okay, until it started to feel a little unsafe but Phil blames his anxiety and his lack of faith in people. 

Georgia had felt it too and they left the group. There were a lot of houses that had been abandoned and that’s where Georgia and Phil were able to find a lot of their medical supplies and a lot of canned food but there wasn’t much. Phil had a hard time going through the houses, it felt like a ghost lived in each one that they stepped in. 

*

Dan and Phil go to bed in their room, leaving the door opened. Dan sinks into Phil, trying to get as close as he possibly can, and reminding himself that they were the lucky ones because they found their way back to each other over and over again. 

They didn’t talk for a while, the only sounds were their lips moving against each other. It felt very reminiscent of their early days, when they were running out of time being alone, when the world felt like it was ready to concave on them. Dan wanted to protect Phil from everything then, and he wanted to protect him from everything now. 

Dan memorises and rememorises Phil’s body, asking where the scars came from. He wasn’t surprised to hear that Phil fell into a bunch when they were trying to be discreet. 

“You’re such a mess.” Dan whispered into his collarbone. 

“I know. I literally told Georgia you’d say that. I’ve nailed my impression of you.” Phil says with a laugh. “You’re about to roll your eyes at me.” 

Dan does as he says it, he pinches his sides and it makes Phil yelp. 

“Fuck you, Phil.” Dan says with a gross fond voice. 

“I mean we could, but the door is open.” 

It earns him a wack from a pillow. 

“I’m the little spoon tonight. I deserve it.” Dan said, turning in their bed and grabbing Phil’s hands to wrap around him. 

“What? I got all the stuff.” Phil protests but he gets closer to Dan. 

“I can’t even begin to count the many times I’ve literally said those exact words whenever you’ve made me go to the store because you didn’t want to. Don’t test me man.” 

Dan squeezes Phil’s fingers. 

“Fine.” Phil says, kissing the back of Dan’s head. 

*

Slowly a couple months turns into half a year. They open their curtains and let the light stream in. 

Walking down the streets of London is like walking down a ghost town, missing people posters filled the streets along with trash and cars. They’ve had many discussions of relocating somewhere safer, somewhere with more possibilities of food and other resources, but it’s hard letting go of the place that shaped you. 

It’s not that London is completely dead. There’s small communities here and there, Georgia and Hannah volunteer at their closest triage center, there’s not much action, some people from different parts of the United Kingdom make it to London hoping for something, but they never really know what. 

Most of the time patients are dehydrated and malnourished. They’ve never really gotten that much help in getting food, whatever happened to them happened everywhere else and it was just trying to pick up the pieces and make something similar to what they had before. 

Dan and Phil go on a lot of walks. They hold hands, they embrace each other in public. 

They thought about going to Wokingham and Isle of Man, but there’s no one in Wokingham and it’s hard to get to Isle of Man, so it becomes a pipe dream. 

They get stopped sometimes, it’s very rare, by old fans, and each time they get stopped they cry. All of them do. They remind each other of a time once before, when the world wasn’t like this, when all they had to worry about was what video they were going to film next. Their hugs linger a little longer, and Dan almost wants to say let’s keep in touch, but he never does. There was impermanence everywhere, and he clings on to the days that they run into people because it’s just a tiny little taste of their old life. 

When they’re not on walks they’re at home, reading books that they’ve kept on their shelf but never bothered to read when they first got them, and when they’re done with those they go to the library and they take new books and always bring them back when they finish. They try to make things normal, it’s kind of hard when there’s nobody there. 

They wait for Georgia and Hannah to get back home, their flat slowly turning into a communal living space for the four of them. Dan and Phil don’t mind, they have a spare bedroom for them anyway. They still believed there was power in numbers, because there were still mornings when they’d wake up in a cold sweat because of a vivid nightmare. 

They have a campfire stove now. The first time that they make rice Hannah cries. 

The new elected officials are still trying to find a way to get the power back on, there have been many failed attempts, it’s just half the population was just gone. 

David finds them again. A lot of his crew dispersed, he still keeps all of the equipment with him, he still has the footage of their very first interview. He still doesn’t know what he plans to do with it, he’s holding on to the belief that things will be up and running again soon. The internet just can’t not exist. 

Dan and Phil let him believe it because they want to believe it too. 

David stays on their couch for a couple of days, he’s figuring out where to go next because he’s a little lost. They couldn’t blame him. 

*

Dan and Phil make a big banner and hang it up in the community center, he doesn’t know if people will actually see it, but the community center was half the triage center and half a place for people to go to when they needed to be with other people. 

It was a sign to clean up their borough in London. It wouldn’t fix everything, but if they were all going to try and move on they needed to do these small things to get there, and cleaning up the streets was just step one. They had a date of when they would start not confident that people would show up. 

People did. They started at the parks first, it was a tedious process because there was so much stuff everywhere, and it was painful looking at all the missing posters, to toys that had been left behind, to tiny shoes and clothes, they didn’t throw those away—they just gave them to the shelter for those who needed it. 

It was something to do to keep people busy who needed it, and it worked. 

Their little corner of London wouldn’t ever be the same but it would be cleaner. 

*

For Hannah’s birthday they make a very, very simple version of curry. Trying to find coconut milk was a hard and rare item, but they made due with what they had—they even found a bottle of wine for the occasion. It was nice to celebrate something, it was springtime now and the weather wasn’t so unbearably cold like it had been. 

That night on the balcony they passed the bottle of wine around and talked about their day and looked up at the stars, the amazement of it all never really wore off. 

“I hope they’re out there seeing this.” Hannah said in a whisper. She reached her thumb out to cover the moon. 

“I think they are.” Dan replied, reaching out to hold Phil’s hand. 

“Oh my god,” Phil said, laughing in delight, pointing at it with his free hand. “A shooting star!”

“I have never seen a shooting star before.” Georgia said in wonder. 

“Me either!” Phil squeaked, it made everyone laugh.

Dan squeezes Phil’s hands and stares at his profile in the moonlight while Phil looked up at the sky. 

**ii.**

_Where were you when it happened?_

Dan was pulling weeds. Summer was right around the corner and everyone in their borough could feel it. They had their share of summer storms the past couple of days which was nice because of the need for water. They had a community garden now, everyone had pitched in just a little bit of water to keep it going, and they always looked up at the sky gratefully whenever it rained. 

When they saw their first baby tomato grow Dan felt this great swell of pride it made him cry.

For a guy that could hardly keep houseplants alive, he was pouring his heart and soul into this community garden and was just starting to reap the benefits. He wished he had a camera to take a picture of the progress of the little tomato. 

Phil was at the triage center with Hannah and Georgia, he went to visit with the kids and try and do some magic that he still (vaguely) remembered when they did TATINOF. He wasn’t the best magician, but it made the kids laugh. 

Dan pets the neighbourhood cat that comes by to try and eat the plants but Dan has since then found some cat food that he places in a bowl outside the community garden fence for the cat to eat instead. He’ll sit down when he’s feeling a little hot and pet the cat, it’s those little moments that make his day worthwhile.

He’s sitting on a bench in the shade near the garden, drinking from his water bottle when he sees a little girl just staring at him in a daze. She must be lost, maybe from another borough because he doesn’t recognise her. He’s gotten pretty good at knowing all the faces in his community and she looked like she didn’t know where she was. 

“Can I help you?” Dan gets up and slowly walks towards her. 

“That’s my house.” She says, her voice is shaking. 

Dan looks towards the house that she’s pointing at. It hasn’t been lived in since The Disappeared happened. He furrowed his eyebrows and takes the cap off his water bottle. 

“Here, drink this, I think you may be dehydrated.” Dan reaches out to usher her to the bench but she pushes passed Dan and runs to the house.

She’s yelling ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ and Dan doesn’t think anything of it but he follows after her anyway. 

“What happened?” She asks, her eyes are wide. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I lived here.” She says with tears in her eyes. “This was my home.”

*

If you were to ask Dan how to explain the events that happened after that day with the little girl, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. No one could. People started coming one by one in this sort of daze that they couldn’t even understand or explain.

It had been five years now since it happened. 

Dan was turning thirty-three soon. 

It had become some sort of weird tradition for their family to meet on the anniversary date of The Disappeared. It wasn’t an official holiday or anything, but most people spent the day with their family that they had once lost.

It was about to be packed in their house with Phil’s parents along with Martyn and Cornelia, and Dan’s mum and brother with nana coming tomorrow since today was a Sunday and church was important to her.

Dan and Phil were doing some late spring cleaning. Phil was conquering his side of the closet and Dan was working in the basement. He had started late last night when he couldn’t sleep. The eve of this day was never an easy one. 

Hannah and Georgia had come over late last night with a bottle of wine and Bryony did too with her girlfriend. It wasn’t a special night by any means because they always hung out together, so it _was_ just an ordinary night even though it kind of wasn’t. They helped clean, they talked, they laughed and cried. They didn’t have to talk about why, there was a whole day to reflect on that.

“Your mum texted me saying that she’s waiting for Adrian at the train station,” Phil called down to Dan. 

Dan snorted. 

“Okay. Hannah and Georgia’s mums are both coming too.” Dan called back up. 

“WHAT?” Phil practically yelled. 

“Fucksake, I told you last night.” 

“You didn’t.” Dan could hear him pout. 

“I definitely did.”

“Do we have enough food?” Phil asked in horror. 

Dan had to roll his eyes as he grabbed an unlabelled box. 

“Yes. You always order way too much food. Plus, aside from my mum, everyone is bringing something.” 

Phil huffed. “Hurry up.” 

Dan gave him the middle finger with a fond smile but he heard the door close. 

“Okay,” Dan whispered, “What is inside of you.” 

He shook his head at his own disgusting innuendo. 

Dan opened the box and saw that it was a bunch of books, and then, just a single notebook. 

He didn’t understand why it looked so familiar. He had thrown out a lot of stuff when they moved into their new place, but there was a couple of boxes of stuff that they didn’t know what to do with, it was stuff that had a lot of sentimental value and Dan figured that this must have made that box.

Dan flipped through it now, wiping dust off of each page and smiling at all of the little doodles he drew and video notes he had left himself. It wasn’t until near the end of the notebook that he saw it. 

The letter that he had wrote. His hands were shaking. 

It took a lot of therapy to try and get over the events that happened, and even then sometimes everyone could just feel it in the air, this sense of, _what if it happened again?_

It never did, but the wound was still fresh and only just starting to heal. 

Dan had written this letter in hopes that someone would find it because he had thought that this was the end of the line for all of them, having lost hope only a few months in. 

Dan reads the last couple of lines. 

_We had a very good life here._

_We were very happy._

_I hope you are too._

_— Dan._

Dan closes the notebook now, and he brings it up with him to put in his new box that he keeps under his bed. It’s keepsakes of that year, plus a few things of when Dan and Phil first met. There’s a Dog Rose that Georgia had pressed into a book when flowers started to bloom again. He didn’t know what it symbolised but he knew that it was important. He places the letter right underneath the book. It was safe there now. 

Dan thinks that all this time he thought he was writing to this great unknown when he was really writing a letter to his future self.

“Everything is good.” Dan whispers, like somehow past Dan could hear him.

He hears Phil coming down the hall into their room to retrieve him. 

“Hey, everyone is here.” Phil places a hand on Dan’s back. 

He turns around to look at Phil now. If he really listens, he can hear their dog barking from excitement at all their guests. 

“Are you okay?” Phil asks, placing a hand on the side of Dan’s face. 

Dan just smiles at the simple and gentle contact. He places a hand on top of Phil’s and takes a deep breath. 

“I’m great.” 

“Good.” Phil says, leaning in to press a kiss to the side of his mouth. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> a couple things: 
> 
> \- i had so many versions of this story. i had so many ways i was going to end this. i didn't know if it was going to make sense, so thank you to tobie, zia, kay, and fi for reading this and thank you to moody for the constant motivation and screaming. 
> 
> \- this story got away from me. my bad. it turned into a much bigger thing than intended. 
> 
> \- i based this story a little bit on the 'the snap' from avengers, i didn't want to get too into the technicalities because i didn't really want the story to be about that—i thought the relationships were more important. 
> 
> \- i love my funky little lesbians, i hope you guys do too. 
> 
> comments/kudos are appreciated! 
> 
> talk to me on tumblr/twitter: **@nihilismdan.**
> 
> [reblog](https://nihilismdan.tumblr.com/post/184758654388/youll-fine-me-waiting-here-for-you-pairing) on tumblr!


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